WHAT EATS A RAT?

by admin on April 6, 2010

What Eats A Rat?

What eats a rat?

What does the rat eat?

Although the rat often attack and eat smaller animals such as mice, birds and insects, a rat is near the bottom of the food chain and near the outside of the food web. That means that a lot of other creatures like to eat them.

Birds of prey such as hawks, owls and eagles will take a rat meal whenever they can get one. So will many kinds of snakes, from poisonous rattlesnakes to snakes that kill their prey by squeezing, or constricting, it such as rat snakes and boa constrictors.

The list of mammals that eat rats is almost endless. Foxes and coyotes eat them, and so do wildcats and weasels. Domestic cats also kill rats—though many cats are afraid of large rats and will not tackle them.

Because so many creatures kill rats, rats reproduce very quickly and have large litters in order to keep their numbers up.

As for the question “what does a rat eat?”—they eat almost anything. It would be hard to come up with a type of food that rats would not be interested in!

An OMNIVORE is an animal that mixes vegetation and other animals into its diet.

FOOD WEBS!

Food Webs Are Maps Of What Eats What, And Who Eats Whom! Below, You'll Find Links To Several Food Webs.

ALL FOOD ENERGY STARTS WITH THE SUN

A food web—every food web—begins with sunlight. Plants turn that sunlight into usable food energy, and that energy is transfered to the herbivorous animals that eat those plants. When those plant eating animals are themselves eaten by predators, the energy is transfered higher up the food chain and becomes concentrated in the bodies of the top, or apex, predators.
The apex predators return energy to the food web after they die and their bodies are consumed by scavengers, fungi and microbes.